Last Saturday we went to visit my dad's side of the family! 'Twas great... we were on the road for a looong time, and I was in the throes of a substantial winter cold, but I still had fun. Played wacked ping-pong among other things; with so many cousins and just one ping-pong table, you can't settle for a one-on-one game for long; it becomes a six-person game, with two on each end and one on each side to cover the wild balls. :-) I wasn't feeling too well that evening, so I spent most of my time in either a blue easy chair which afforded great comfort to my poor little stuffed-up head, or in one of the dining table chairs minimally participating in whatever conversation was going on. Fortunately, by Christmas Eve I was a little better, so I was able to sing "I Wonder as I Wander" for the church service. Admittedly, I felt like I needed to hack throughout the song, and I wasn't in my best voice, but I guess I didn't sing too badly. (Mom had rewritte

As before, I will be celebrating three Christmases: one at each set of grandparents' and one at home. The first was yesterday. Of course, to start the day off, I was working more on wrapping gifts (for a later Christmas, fortunately; yesterday's had been finished on Wednesday). The fun part about this year is that I used paint to write the recipient's name on each package... when the little nozzle wasn't clogged up, which it happened to do once yesterday, fairly badly. I bent over it, squeezing hard... While unbeknownst to me, my mom had lit a small, itty-bitty candle and set it in the middle of the dining room table where I was working. My hair isn't really short.... And you can probably guess where this is leading. A few strands of my hair caught on fire, startling me and causing me to wave it around so it would go out quickly (which it did, leaving no noticeable damage to my haircut). Fortunately the package on which I was writing suffered no harm at all. :-)

So I've been at home on break; it's quite nice. I'm getting pretty lazy though, or at least I'm not nearly as busy as I have been at college. I hope to remedy that soon. I have lots of projects up my sleeve.... books to read, journal entries to write, songs to copy into my songbook, meals to cook, Christmas shopping to do, relatives to visit, a Christmas letter to write, blogs to keep up on (*grin*), photographs to take, poems to memorize, and something in the bottom of my suitcase that I'm forgetting at the moment... dangit, I wish I could remember what that was! I remembered last night... and my sis would probably help me remember, but she's not around at the moment. Grr. I'm keeping up on my (relatively) new dancing hobby. I taught my brother the basic steps and two moves of Hustle today, believe it or not. He's one of the last people I would have thought interested enough to learn. But he wasn't bad at all, and admitted it was fun once yo

Instructions: Pick one artist/band. Using only SONG NAMES from that ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions...no repeating song names... I picked Simon and Garfunkel. And I had to get some help from an alphabetical list of S&G songs... but I know most of these, truly! 1) Are you a male or female? Cecilia 2) Describe yourself? The Only Living Boy in New York 3) Describe your day? Homeward Bound 4) Describe where you currently live? At the Zoo 5) If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Scarborough Fair 6) Your best friend is: Mrs. Robinson 7) Your favorite color is: A Hazy Shade of Winter 8) You know that: The Times They Are A-Changin' 9) What's the weather like? The Sound of Silence 10) If your life was a television show, what would it be called? The Dangling Conversation 11) What is life to you? Bookends 12) What is the best advice you have to give? Keep the Customer Satisfied 13) Describe your ex? Old Friends 14) Your current love interest? The Boxer 15) What'

I'm officially finished with my first college semester. Isn't that weird? Just yesterday I was homeschooled, in high school, at home, etc... Now I'm a "college kid"! In other nonnews, I have three candy canes sitting on my desk as of this moment; and I don't like candy canes. Not much anyway. I even had one a few days ago to make sure I still didn't like them, and I was right. So these three lonely little candy canes are going to my siblings, or maybe to some friends down the street. Whoever will take them.

This is finals week, and I'm not stressing out. Is that a sin? I do have two exams tomorrow morning, one of which might be the hardest of the three I have to take this week; and I've studied this morning and a little this afternoon. But I don't think excessive studying is going to do anything for me; I already know most of the material, and what little I don't quite remember is probably going to stick after glancing at the computer screen on which it was posted (mine) a few times. That's how I remember that John Lasseter was the founder of Pixar and developed the digitization of animation (basically, he directed/produced Toy Story ). See, it's the little things that I occasionally forget. The important stuff, like the four eras of journalism and the means by which TV stations get revenue, etc., is practically impossible to forget - especially since the questions are always in some sort of jog-my-memory form like multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank. We playe

Would you trade your right to vote for a new car?

Well, for those of my readers who aren't related to me... :-) (i know for a fact that both my brother and Mom have picked up on how to use the RSS feed for this blog!) Mom and my siblings went to visit my grandmother today, and Mom called when they got back. Grandma is doing better today; apparently yesterday was a bad day for her, and today has been an improvement. She's still in the hospital though, weak and with a cough; she's hoping to get out soon. The problem this time wasn't her heart, as it's been before; it was her kidney. She might have to go on dialysis. But... as Mom put it in a prayer request to our ch urch, "she is fairly adamant in not talking about eternity."

I mentioned over Thanksgiving that my grandmother wasn't doing too well... and she's worse. Earlier she was extremely weak, and coughing. Now she's in the hospital, for the fifth time in two months, and my mom's not sure how much longer she has to live. Grandma's not a Christian, so please pray.